Anne Sexton received the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in
1966 for Live or Die.
She was a "confessional poet" in the tradition of Robert
Lowell, Sylvia Plath and W.D. Snodgrass. Her work
reflected the emotional anguish that characterized her
life and resulted in her suicide in 1974 at the age of
46.
Born in Newton, Massachusetts, in 1928, she married Alfred
Muller Sexton II at the age of 19.
She was diagnosed with postpartum depression in 1954 after
giving birth to a daughter in 1953 and suffered the first
of several mental breakdowns.
She had shown an interest in writing poetry in high school
and was encouraged to pursue it by her doctor at Westwood
Lodge, a neuropsychiatric hospital where she sought help.
She met the poet Maxine Kumin , who became a close friend,
at a poetry workshop in 1957 where she had enrolled at
the Boston Center for Adult Education. Kumin expressed
her belief, in her introduction to Sexton's Complete
Poems, "that it was the writing of poetry that gave
Sexton something to work towards and develop and thus
enabled her to endure life for as long as she did."
her poems...
Bibliography
Poetry:
To Bedlam and Part Way Back (1960)
All My Pretty Ones (1962)
Selected Poems (1964)
Live or Die (1966)
Love Poems (1969)
Transformations (1971)
The Book of Folly (1973)
The Death Notebooks (1974)
The Awful Rowing Toward God (1975)
45 Mercy Street (1976)
Words for Dr. Y.: Uncollected Poems (1978)
The Complete Poems (1981)
Prose:
Anne Sexton: A Self-Portrait in Letters (1977)
Anne Sexton exhibits elsewhere on the web:
Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton: Two Confessional Poets
From Modernist Conversations.
Anne Sexton and Poetic Confessionals Poetic Confessionalism
By RJ McCaffery for Conspire.
Anne Sexton
By Dr. Bette A. Reagan.
Anne Sexton (1928-1974)
Anne Sexton: Gwendolyn Stewart
Life Studies: American Poetry from T. S. Eliot to Allen Ginsberg
Poets.org Biography
[Her Kind]
[Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs]
[The Truth the Dead Know]
[Wanting to Die]
[Home]
[Poetry]
[Short Stories]
[Quotes]
[Philosophy]
[Biographies]
[Links]
[Copyright]
[Contact]
[Site Index]
<top>
|